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again, this is an inflammatory and provocative statement. that kind of language is not hermeneutically/exegetically sound and has caused many unnecessary divisions. there isn't one, definitive position on the matter, many great thinkers have landed in different camps and have all coexisted on the subject.

The proof that my statement is true is that no one even considered theistic evolution to be a natural conclusion of the plain reading of scripture until anti-Christian theories of our origins began circulating. You can't reason your way to theistic evolution without first assuming theistic (or any kind of) evolution. Theistic evolution is meant to try to reconcile what the Bible says with what many believe is evidence for our origins, since the plain reading of scripture doesn't comport with that "evidence". You wouldn't have to reconcile anything if evolutionary theory were obvious from the text. You would just say the "evidence" supports what the Bible already teaches to be true.

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not entirely true. evolution is a rock solid fact. universal common descent is not. theistic evolution harmonizes with the former, is not dependent on the latter.

Why do you think I keep using the phrase "evolutionary theory of origins"? We can see mutations happening. We can see changes within species occurring. What we cannot see or test are one kind of animal changing into another kind. We don't see fish changing into frogs. We don't see monkeys changing into humans. We have to interpret evidence to conclude that happens because we cannot observe it ourselves. If we can't observe it or test it or falsify it, it's not really scientific. It's more philosophy than science.

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just so we're clear, what you are saying is patently mistaken.

It's not at all. The evidence, as I keep saying, is that you wouldn't come to that sort of conclusion at all without first assuming evolutionary theory of origins was true in the first place. There wouldn't be anything to reconcile if you didn't already assume Darwin to be right, because again, such a conclusion is not going to come from a plain reading of the scriptures, itself.

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it makes me sad you actually believe this. again, this is provocative language that is not helpful or necessary

Bold language is needed when there's an attack on the perspicuity of scriptures that can lead to a destruction of the Gospel.

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now you're trying to read people's minds

OK, I'll rephrase: so many Christians are willing to abandon the clear teaching of scripture because they don't want to seem unscientific or foolish in the eyes of the world, or they are misled by the philosophies of the world.

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debatable

It's really not. You have to completely mythologize the creation account in order to get theistic evolution out of that without injecting evolutionary theory of origins into the text to begin with. How can Adam be made from the dust of the earth if he was born of another human or human-like creature after millions or billions of years?

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this is an exegetically myopic stance. you are unnecessarily defining ??? (yom) as a 24 hour period. this is not etymologically sound. if you have taken exegesis, then you are familiar with an academic word study of ancient hebrew. checking the usual sources, strong's/bdb/holladay, that word does not always mean a 24 hour period. that is why any oec advocates (day-age, gap, theistic evolution) are on solid hermeneutical ground with their interpretation of the creation narrative

I know the meaning of the word. You can understand what the word means by its usage within its context. Moses is writing about a (24-hour) day of the week that the people are commanded to rest on and it is compared to the creation week and the days of that week. Is Moses (God) mixing up his usage of the word in the span of one sentence? Again, there is no reason to assume this means anything other than a literal 24-hour period of time unless you are coming to the text with other beliefs on the matter.

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theistic evolution does not necessarily make this extrapolation

I was using the word "know" flippantly because we don't know what our origins were from "physical history" as you stated. We can only infer from interpreting the evidence in light of evolutionary theory, in a naturalistic sense.

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we've already covered this ground. many christians do not believe paul was only referring to physical death. we can start to laboriously cover the commentaries if you wish, or you can just believe that i wouldn't assert that if it weren't true.

And again, that has been the orthodox interpretation of the text which you dispute merely because orthodoxy doesn't dictate truth. You would have no other reason to assume any other interpretation unless you were looking to force evolutionary theory of origins into the Bible.

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nope. again, an exegetical word study does not support what you are saying.

Sure it does.

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even this is not entirely true. you could merely make this application for any "humans" that existed before the biblical adam.

Sure it is. The fall of Adam (man) impacted the whole of creation. It's why we're told the animals were vegetarians before Adam sinned and fell, because even animal death didn't exist before sin, and then physical death entered the world.

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again, this is provocative language. plenty of biblical scholars are every bit as aware of ancient hebrew as you are and do not agree with what you are saying. the problem with your characterization is that it implies they are exercising a spiritual defect that might even be eroding/preventing their salvation. as a brother in christ, i am informing you that is not something we should be leveling at each other. this is not a christological controversy.

You might not see the christological controversy but it is there all the same. The reason why I said "clearly" is because of the context. You have to ignore it completely in order to push that square peg into the round hole.

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his statement on the matter is pretty clear

Show me his statement.

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i have tried to correct this but you remain recalcitrant. i referred you to the billy graham quote on the matter. theistic evolutionists do not assume adam is metaphorical. there can be a literal adam amongst the development of hominids. to say that can't be is to limit what God can do with creation

Yes, I'm aware that the theory holds that eventually a "man" was born and God put a spirit in him. That is not the Adam of the scriptures that God created from the earth and breathed life into. The Adam of Genesis is mythologized in theistic evolution and another Adam takes his place, one that was born of an earthly mother and father and not one created by God as God's special creation, made uniquely in His image.

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this is only true if you mischaracterize theistic evolution

Again, the Adam of theistic evolution is not the Adam of the Bible and therefore can't be a representative for all mankind when there isn't even the first man of his kind to be a representative of. Even the name "Adam" is a wordplay on the word "earth", what he was formed from, yet that doesn't make a lot of sense if he was born of a human father and mother as is required by (theistic) evolutionary theory.